2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 60: Work in Progress: A Comprehensive Design & Prototyping Platform for Rapid HW/SW Development Classes

Robotics, autonomous transportation, and other computerized physical systems become widely accessible subjects for even a semester-long lecture and laboratory class. Sometimes, the physical systems are often transformed to cyber-physical systems (CPSs) by interfacing modules in physical systems to cyber system. It is often challenging for undergraduate students to implement a CPS comprising of analog and digital hardware and software within a limited period (e.g., ≈ 5 weeks) although they are accessible to highly automated development tools. In order to mitigate restrictions of a CPS development time and environment in a classroom, we have developed a comprehensive design and prototyping platform (CDPro) for rapidly designing and prototyping a miniature autonomous vehicle controlled via a cyber-control system as a CPS. The CDPro provides a real-time hardware-in-the-loop simulation with virtual and real prototypes. In particular, the CDPro is capable of performing high accuracy real-time simulations. Based on the CDPro development, a course has been offered for three academic years to introduce the concept of the CDPro and synthesize hands-on analog and digital systems and hardware and software integration experiments. The CDPro is expected to mitigate time-consuming learning and utilize the different modeling and prototyping tools from various vendors for class activities. The CDPro is also expected to be beneficial for students before and after their engineering education.

YONG-KYU JUNG is an Associate Professor at Gannon University. He was an Assistance Professor at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. and MSEE from Georgia Institute of Technology and a BSEE from Korea University. He was a Vice President of VLSI technology at VP Technologies Inc. He was Senior Research Engineer at LG Electronics His research and education interests include Cyber-physical System Design, Design Automation, and Rapid Prototyping & Reconfigurable/Reliable Computing.

Dr. Karinna Vernaza joined Gannon University in 2003, and she is the Interim Dean of the College of Engineering and Business and a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Her B.S. is in Marine Systems Engineering from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. She was awarded the 2012 ASEE NCS Outstanding Teacher Award, 2013 Gannon University Distinguished Faculty Award and 2013-2014 Gannon University Faculty Award for Excellence in Service-Learning. Dr. Vernaza does research in engineering education (active learning techniques) and high-strain deformation of materials. She is currently the PI of an NSF S-STEM. Dr. Vernaza is the chair of the ASEE North Central Section (2017-19).